MENDING AND MAKING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19512, 10 June 1933, Page 10

MENDING AND MAKING

USES FOR STICKING PLASTER. LAMP SHADES; ALSO HATS. Sticking plaster is nearly always connected with things surgical, and it is not always realised how useful it may be to the layman or woman with things, rather than persons, to mend. There is the electric lamp-shade, for instance, which has the unhappy knack of breaking away round the top edge, whereas the rest of it is good. This is due to the heat of the wires, and it happens almost inevitably, and particularly when bulbs are allowed to grow older than they should. To stick new paper round the edge is a difficult and complicated job, since the paper has to be cut on the round in order to set well. The best plan is first to adjust the shade edge to the wire by means of surgical sticking plaster. This sets best if pieces are cut off on the slant, making diamonds, and are then put on with each slanting edge giving a little to make the round. Once the shade is firm it is comparatively easy to adjust a paper binding. Another use for sticking plaster is concerned with felt hats. There are many felt hats, dear to fancy, which have been worn so often, always with the same pull in the same place, that the felt, particularly if it is a good one, gives way altogether. Some people paste a piece of woollen stuff of exactly the same colour as the hat inside the crown. A better method since there is no danger of paste coming through, is to apply sticking plaster to the inside of the thin place. It is often possible, if there is really a hole, to draw the edges together on the plaster, which holds them perfectly firm. This method lengthens the life of a hat considerably.